What I Learned

Laurie Santos gave me lots of insight on how to improve my daily life in the video “Psychology and the Good Life”. Some of the ideas that I think will be the most helpful for me are making time for things other than work and importance of getting proper sleep.

Making time: Santos speaks on how nowadays people get so caught up in work that they don’t spend time doing anything else. She explained how this is very bad for our health and we need to make time for other things. I can incorporate this in my life my setting a schedule every week for when I will hangout with my friends and go to the gym so I don’t end up spending my entire day doing homework.

Sleep: Santos talked about the importance of sleep and how a lack of sleep can greatly affect a persons happiness. She mentioned a statistic of highschool students getting an average of around 4 hours of sleep per night which is far from the recommended 8 hours. I can ensure that I get a good nights sleep every night by setting an alarm on my phone to go to bed at a certain time every night.

What My Partner Nico Learned

In the video “Psychology and the Good Life” by Laurie Santos I was able to learn about on how to improve my quality of life and just how to become happier overall. The main takeaways I got from the video was the importance of expressing gratitude and helping others.

Expressing Gratitude: Santos stressed the importance of being grateful for all the great things we have in life. She explained how doing has proven to make people happier through several studies. I can incorporate this into my life my sitting down for 20 minutes with no distractions and writing out all the things I am grateful for.

Helping Others: Santos described an experiment in which people were given 5 dollars and some kept the money and spent on themselves while others gave it to others. It was found that the ones who gave the money away were significantly more satisfied. This shows that in helping others you are indirectly helping your own happiness. I can incorporate this in my life by making sure to do a random act of kindness week such as giving a homeless person money.

What Our Group Learned